


Winter Is Over

by buckynatalia



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, Recovered Memories, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:59:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckynatalia/pseuds/buckynatalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff is living a quiet life as an assassin in New York City when an unexpected guest shows up on her doorstep late at night, bringing up a flood of hazy memories. Bucky Barnes finds an unexpected home with the conflicted Nat, who shoves him into the spectacular present and helps him to piece together the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Visitor

——

It was a heavy day, everything humid and wet. The tired clouds had loosed a thunderstorm that shook the base of my apartment building, each rumble of thunder echoing in the spaces between my ribs. I sat in my kitchen, attempting to eat ramen noodles with chopsticks, watching the storm rage outside. They never scared me, these forces of nature, no matter how destructive they got. Even as a girl, I’d watch the Russian blizzards rage on outside with a sort of wonder. Tonight it seemed like the rain was hiding something. And half past midnight, there was a knock at my door.

I recognized it, from hazy days of blood-soaked snow and windburn, of metal limbs and tangled red hair. Red everything, really. Someone’s knuckles hit my door three times, slowly. I rose silently, tucking my pistol into my waistband as I went. The only people who knocked at my door this late were either bearers of bad news or they were bad news.

I cracked the door, the cool night air washing over me like a dream, one curled around the trigger of my gun. There was a dark shape outside my door, a familiar broad-shouldered man. Someone who might have been mistaken for a nightmare. A red star gleamed in the streetlights, the man’s dark tangled hair collecting droplets. The half-dead kitchen light illuminated a face I thought I’d never see again, all angles and hollow spaces and stubble.

“Hello, Natalia.” he said, his voice no older than I remembered, standing in worn boots on the crumbling cement steps. He was tussled and exhausted, but there was something there that made me look closer. That light, in his eyes. He was aware, broken free. 

“Soldier,” I said through the lump in my throat. There had been nights when I’d wake with his name in my mouth, lingering like wine on my tongue, and tormented myself over memories that fell just outside my grasp. I looked behind me, at the place that would never quite be my home. Dingy kitchen, thrift store couch, a gun hidden under the bed. On my steps, a man I thought I’d left in the winter of my life. Being with him was the closest I’d ever felt to home, and look how I’d paid for it. With bruises and screams, sleepless nights, my mind rummaged through and cleaned out. Countless invisible wounds that would never heal.

But winter was over, and everything had changed.

“Come in,” I murmured.

____________

 

After we’d sat around my kitchen table and talked until our voices grew hoarse, after I’d told him all the things that had gone wrong, the small things that had gone right, he said he should be going. Like I’d let him drift away again, unanchored. It was 3 AM, and there were dark circles under his eyes. I told him to take the couch. I convinced him to stay, even if some feral animal part of me knew he could still be a threat. So he nodded and let me give him a pillow and blanket, and who knows how long it had been since he’d slept on something as soft as my old couch. I left a pink razor and a towel in the bathroom, in case.

It all seemed so far away. The so-called ballerina with bruises on her delicate hands, hands that could wring a man’s throat or assemble a bomb. Her teacher, the lost soldier boy with steely eyes. He taught me all he knew about killing. I showed him everything I’d learned about living. Somehow, between bloody assassinations and stealing national secrets, we cobbled together a strange kind of bond. We made sure the other person had a loaded gun and warm boots. He wrapped my wounds. I gave him books. Short, violent days turned into long winter nights, and I discovered that I had found love in the last place I would expect. 

Once I was alone, watching the moonlight filter through the blinds, I trailed my fingers under my shirt hem, over the uneven scar where his bullet had pierced my abdomen. And the newer one, scabbed over, by my shoulder. I didn’t blame him for hurting me. I blamed him for being gentle and warm. I hated him for all the kind words, for protecting me even when I didn’t need it. I could never recover from that.

______________

 

When I woke, he wasn’t on the couch. Something in my gut twisted, and my eyes skittered over my apartment, illuminated by the weak morning light filtering through the windows. “James?” I called out, little more than a whisper.

“I’m here,” a voice called from the kitchen. He was sitting at a table, his jaw smooth, reading a newspaper, something he’d found in the entryway. Usually I didn’t bother to read the freshly-typed up lies that they liked to broadcast around the city, but sometimes they were anchored in truth. The action of reading the paper was so mundane, it was odd to see him do it. Out of place, like snow in the summer.

I shoved two pieces of bread in the toaster. “Morning.” Outside there was the sound of cars passing by, birds singing from dirty gutters and scabby-kneed children yelling to one another. Morning sounds, ordinary stuff. That man needed some ordinary, some time away from chaos and violence.

"What did you call me?” he asked abruptly, as I sat down.

“James,” I said slowly, remembering. My mind was healed the best it could be. But not him. He was still in jagged pieces, like glass, the shards cutting at his skull. He wasn’t Steve’s Bucky, not my James, but someone else entirely. It had to be painful. “I called you James."

James tilted his head to the side, like he did in the interrogation room. I’d never been on this side of the table. “What was I to you?"

“You were my teacher.” I said carefully. “You taught me how to shoot a man from a mile away. You taught me how to fight in a blizzard, how to pick a lock without the person inside knowing. And . . .” And you whispered things into my hair, you taught me how to fight dirty, how to kiss like I meant it. “I was your prodigy, the Red Room’s finest. We were partners.” He narrowed his eyes, a question. “We had an affair, I fell in love. And then your programming began to malfunction. Mine too. I could see through the lies, I was undoing whatever they’d done. At first you had nightmares, then the memories came back.” I took a breath. “Then they found us, one night, and that was the end. I never saw you again.”

He didn’t correct me. The Winter Soldier came after me at Odessa, and again on the highway. That wasn’t the man I knew. “What did they do to you?” He asked, emotionless.

“Same as you, I think.” I said carefully. “A series of torturous mental and physical procedures that ended in electrocution of my cerebral cortex. You were erased from my memory almost entirely. After they took you, I broke out of the Red Room. I went rogue, killed world leaders in exchange for exorbitant amounts of money. It was around then that the nightmares started happening, dreams about someone with a metal arm, bits and pieces. You were a ghost, in more ways than one."

We sat in silence a long time, him calculating, me sifting through my mind. 

“What do I call you?” James asked minutes later, his dark eyes bright in the sunny room. 

“Nat,” I said, without thinking. Ordinary, unimbellished, a small truth. “Romanoff, maybe."

“Romonova,” he echoed, the name rolling off his tongue, sounding entirely different in his mouth, heavy, like gunmetal. “You’re a regular Tsarina, aren’t you?"

“I’m no more a princess than you are,” I said with a small smile. “And it’s a common name.”

“They never found the last Romanov,” he said absently. “She was born around the same time you were, Nat."

Nat. “Urban legend,” I dismissed. “Let’s go out."

He smiled, or something like it. “Where?”

“Anywhere,” I said, already lacing up my boots. And then, jokingly, “the twenty-first century is waiting for you, James Barnes.”

His eyes glittered. “What if I’m not ready for it?”

“You have to be,” I tossed him a pair of gloves, to cover the metal. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice."

He stood up, and after all this time, despite my heeled combat boots, he still towered over me. But he wasn’t the monster of my dreams, just a lost man with nothing left. “Let’s go,” James said, tossing me my jacket from the back of a chair.

My hand skimmed across the inside of my jacket, felt the telltale coldness of a handgun, reassuring. James, or Bucky, rather, was waiting on the porch, looking like he could be anyone’s generic unshaved boyfriend. I locked the door behind us, deadbolting it too. Outside, I revved the engine of an old Harley that had been righteously stolen. “Get on,” I told him after sliding into the front seat, gripping the handles. He wrapped his hands around my waist without a comment, and I shot out of the driveway, the trees and houses blurring past us in a whirlwind of color.

“Where are we going?” He yelled above the wind, once we’d left my neighborhood.

“The future,” I said, and accelerated.

____________


	2. Crows and Plastic Signs

____________

 

The sky was a bright gray, like it had been watercolored by a sloppy hand. Crows flew past, calling to each other with desperate cries, completely oblivious to the two people sitting below them. Cars shot by. The gray of the clouds reflected in Bucky’s eyes. We sat in wrought iron chairs, sipping coffee, watching people pass by. Many of them were young. Heedless as the crows.

“So this is the future?” Bucky asked, a tinge of confusion in his voice. His eyes found mine, across the table.

“It is,” I smiled, or something near to it. He remembered. But he didn't quite understand. “Tell me what you see."

Bucky let out a long breath, then looked around warily. It was a warm morning, and downtown was bustling, thrumming with life. His coffee sat drained on the table, one hand still curled around it. If he was a complete stranger, I would have thought that he was ignoring me. 

“I see old buildings with new shells,” he said slowly. “Civilians. I see people who are absorbed in themselves. I see crows and plastic signs.”

“That’s the future,” I said, looking around us. "Glossy plastic signs and corporate-run everything. Everything’s fake, James. Only trust yourself.” 

Bucky tilted his head. “And who is that?”

I looked at the man across the table. Biologically twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Bucky seemed impossibly young in his old gray t-shirt, with his round eyes reflective as mirrors. It was hard to believe that this was the man responsible for my bullet wounds, a man that had suffered the same as I did, worse. He was old, in every sense of the word.

Who was he? “Someone good, I think.”

“You think that?” He asked, reaching across the table and touched the scar on my left shoulder. There was a twinge of pain as his fingertips grazed it. It wasn't quite healed, only now starting to fade from scab to scar. I didn't care much, anymore. Bucky looked like he was crumbling. “I’m not good, Natalia. Far from it."

“Steve certainly seems to think so,” I responded quietly. Bucky flinched, worse than if I’d hit him. He looked out over the street, and his eyes were just a little glassy. Probably just the gray morning light playing tricks on me. I kept my voice gentle. I was terrible at gentle. “Cap's looking for you, you know.”

“He can keep looking,” Bucky murmured. Not cruelly, not like he wanted his former friend to suffer. I understood him. Sometimes it felt good to disappear. I’d vanished too many times to count. Several times I'd let people think I was dead: perished in a fire, a fatal shootout, a slip on some ice. People believed what they wanted to believe. It made my job so much simpler. It made his life so much more difficult. 

“Why me?” I wondered aloud, a few minutes later. I watched him go completely still. “Seven billion people in the world, and you choose my doorstep. Why?”

“Because you know what it's like,” Bucky said, not missing a beat. “Being emptied out, drained of everything you are. But you're an excellent liar, Natalia. You always rebuild yourself, over and over again.” His eyes slid back onto mine, razor sharp, soft at the edges. “And I think that’s a skill worth learning. I thought maybe you'd teach me."

A half-smile worked it’s way onto my face. I nodded, once. I knew he was shattered, mind scattered, and maybe I was no help; salt in his wounds. I have never believed in fate, or soulmates, or luck. But I knew, whatever souls were made of, ours were the same. For better or for worse. I knew it would keep me up at night, that I may regret it. But Bucky Barnes was here to stay.

 

_______________

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a bit short, so I'm sorry about that, my inspiration comes in bursts. But I hope you enjoy!


	3. Strays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They watch a sunset from the top of Nat's apartment building; watch the city get all dark and glittery. Bucky and Nat wonder if they should venture out into the night, find somewhere to feel less lost. They may even go dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I hope you enjoy this next chapter. I love writing these two, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading, it means a lot!
> 
> also, you might like to listen to this while you read.  
> http://8tracks.com/kheleesi/winter-is-over-1
> 
> ___
> 
> You can find my tumblr at   
> http://nataliaromonov.tumblr.com/

_______________

 

The sun was putting up a fight as it set, bruising the sky indigo and lilac, bleeding a deep red. The light was only now beginning to dim, the days stretching longer and longer as summer set in. 

I remembered cold days back in Russia, short and pierced with bullets and screams. Nights were longer, dark and peaceful on the nights I didn’t have missions. Sometimes James and I would meet in back alleys full of grime. We'd pass a cigarette back and forth, hold hands in the dark to keep warm. Sometimes the two of us would sneak into the theater in town. We’d climb into the rafters and watch from above, watch the painted actors move about. Smell the sawdust, the greasepaint. Maybe after, we’d go to a bar and pretend to be ordinary, just to entertain ourselves. The Red Room wasn’t all bad. I found him there, after all. 

We sat on the roof of my apartment building, our legs hanging over the edge. My heavy boots weighed me down, and we watching the sky drain of color, fade to black like in an old movie. The gravel on the rooftop dug into my hands. I don’t know how long we’d been sitting here; maybe a long time.

“James?”

He was staring out at the city, too. “Nat?”

We watched the lights flicker on in the distance. It was glittering, all the lights and neon signs, a dreamlike wasteland. “Do you want to go out?”

“So soon, Romanoff?” he teased, “you barely know me."

I rolled my eyes. “Very funny."

“We can go out, Natalia,” Bucky said, deadpan.

“You’re ridiculous,” I dismissed, getting to my feet. He followed me up, his combat boots scraping against the uneven cement. Bucky was so much taller than me, it was irritating at times. I had to crane my neck just to look him in the eye. We climbed down the rickety fire escape ladder, the rust leaving stains on my hands. It was a long way down, my flat was on the first floor. Lucky thing I’d always liked heights.

Inside, I flicked all of the lights on. The warm yellow light glanced off of the windows, the oven door, his reticulated steel fingers. My black cat jumped into his lap, as soon as Bucky sat down. Liho, you traitor. 

I slipped into my room to change. I needed to relieve stress, go somewhere with loud music and not much else. I wanted a night out that didn’t involve murder. And the Winter Soldier needed some fun. I pulled a skirt on, a pair of opaque tights. I rifled through my dresser for things that were clean, that weren’t splattered in blood and oil and grime. I’d ripped up so many clothes on undercover missions, I hardly had any left. At the back of my closet, there was this black button-down that probably belonged to Clint at one point. Maybe it would fit Bucky.

I found a wine-colored blouse with a tiny spot of blood along the hem. No one would notice, if I tucked it into my skirt just right. Leaning over the mirror on my dresser, I drew a line across my eyelids in sooty kohl. It made me look more intimidating. Less like someone who took in strays. A black cat, an ex-assassin. All the same.

I strapped my handgun to my thigh. Being armed to the teeth never hurt. I stepped out of my bedroom to find Bucky kneeling on the carpet, scratching Liho on the belly. Christ, she didn’t even let me do that.

He glanced up. “You look great,” James said, the words coming out of his mouth easy, like they’d always been there. Years ago, he must have been the kind of syrupy-smiled boy who sweet-talked girls left and right. Now, that shiny smoothness had been tarnished; worn away. Now he seemed like he was telling the truth. Perhaps I was just flattering myself.

“Thank you,” I said, and tossed him the black shirt. He caught it out of the air. “I found this. I don’t know if you want to wear it…”

He held it by the shoulder seams, looking conflicted. I’d seen the pictures in his file, a young Brooklyn boy about to go fight in an ugly war he would never stop fighting. In the grainy sepia photo, he wore his uniform like armor. And then Hydra strapped him into a lethal outfit, like a straitjacket, and he’s been running ever since. Sometimes clothes could mean a lot. 

“Sure. I’ll put it on."

I waited for him to change, leaning against the sink. Watching my reflection in the window, I slid a dark red tube across my lips, colored them red. A spiderweb hung in the corner of my window, with it’s inhabitant hanging by a thread: black and ambiguous. It began to build it’s web larger, spinning a tapestry of silk, it’s spindly black legs careful and precise. I didn’t touch it: there would be no killing tonight.

The bathroom door opened, and he stepped out looking every kind of uncomfortable. It was little small, his strong shoulders straining against the fine black fabric. But otherwise, completely ordinary. Something in my ribcage ached. I gave him a nod. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he looked down at himself. "Thanks for the shirt.”

“No problem.” I slid my clunky boots back on, figuring that heels didn’t do well on motorcycles. I locked my door behind us, the key grating in the lock. The darkness was so deep that the streetlamps seemed barely able to penetrate it, and my dinky porch lamp paid us no help at all.

In the distance, a girl screamed, followed by a chorus of laughter: just kids. I let out a breath, relieved that I didn’t have to be a superhero tonight. I settled onto the Harley, the metal cold beneath my thighs. The engine sounded like thunder when I started it, the low growl reminiscent of something predatory. There are wolves in the night. James’ breath was hot against my ear. His metal arm was tight against my waist, moving every few minutes, the reticulated scales shifting ever so slightly against my dress. It felt like security. 

The buildings grew larger, entered the never-ending canyon of concrete and bright lights. The skyscrapers blurred together, all the same. Except for one, lonely above the rest. “Is that Avengers Tower?” James asked, looking up as we stopped for a red light.

“Something like that,” I said. Only one room was lit. Someone paced back and forth, likely talking to himself. Stark was up there right now, left alone in a huge tower with an endless supply of empty space and alcohol. “Headquarters have moved."

I shot forward, and he gripped my waist tighter. The farther from the skyscrapers we got, the buildings gradually got less shiny, more dirty. People watched from fire escapes as we shot by. Stores and old houses were boarded up, closed for the night. I could already hear music, fireworks in the distance.

“How is it, being an Avenger?” He asked, as I slid into a parking spot. The air stilled, heavy around us. I felt like a mayfly stuck in tree sap. 

“Exhausting, some days,” I sighed.

James looked up at all the buildings, at the washed-out looking sky. An airplane went over, blinking red and white. People laughed around us, couples held hands. They blurred together. “And do you like it? Being their Black Widow?”

“It isn’t the worst job I’ve done. Rewarding, I suppose,” I looked over at Bucky, at the dark wisps of hair falling into his eyes. No one had ever asked me if I liked what I did. I’d never had a choice. “I’ve taken so many lives, I figured maybe I should try to save some.” 

He nodded thoughtfully, and I knew he understood.

I glanced at a group of drunk girls giggling nearby. They could hardly walk, leaning on each other for support. The smell of fruit wine and sweat permeated the air around them. It smelled like youth. They made their way down the street, an assortment of glittery limbs and tall shoes. They seemed invincible, at least for tonight.

A nightclub appeared out of nowhere, wedged in between buildings. The entrance was brick and steel, and a pair of bouncers stood guard. Beautiful people in shiny clothing spilled out onto the street. Lights pulsed from inside, and we stepped forward like moths to the light. The bouncer waved us in without a second glance.

The bass pulsed through the floor; pounded in my chest like an artificial heart. Bursts of light flickered over us. Blue, purple, illuminating undulating bodies shifting in the dark. Surreal, people’s hands waved above their heads. I couldn’t hear the words to the music, but it didn’t matter. 

Bucky gazed around, lost, the lights coloring his face every color. I pulled him onto the dance floor with me. His hand was cool, despite the warmth of the air, callused and scarred. It wasn’t unpleasant, holding hands with him. We were jostled together by the crowd, inches apart. I started to dance, moving like the blank faces around us, trying to forget about the precise repetition of ballet. None of that was real, anyway.

“I don’t know how to dance,” he confessed, into my hair. But that couldn’t be true. The stories that Steve told me, of the handsome best friend that was always taking girls to dance clubs, sweeping them off their feet. I suppose it wasn’t the 40’s now, and it never would be. But I’d picked some things up, hanging around all those soldiers. 

Slowly I took his hands, placed one on my waist. I began to sway, twirling around like they did 70 years ago. Bucky took my free hand, dipping me low. A woman was singing, a wail, all around us. Drums banged in my head. I felt a smile break across my face. We bumped into strangers as we swung each other around with reckless abandon. It was starting to come back, all at once, the muscle memory of swing dancing all those years ago. I could see it in the way Bucky moved. He didn’t seem so far away anymore.

Hours we stayed there, caught up in the flow of sound and energy, the steady feeling of another human in the darkness. There was this song that came on, and it sounded heavy, like iron in the earth. Bucky’s arm was tight across my back. The song had an ache to it. I can’t remember the words, now. He still smelled like woodsmoke and gunmetal. He was so close, watching me like I was a work of art. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. Bucky stilled. 

And pulled me closer.

 

_________________


	4. You Always Did Impress Me

When we finally pulled apart, my lipstick had smeared onto his soft lips. He untangled his hands from my hair, and we looked at each other, stunned. We were inches apart, still, the crowd didn’t allow us any more space. Bucky was rumpled and vaguely stunned. 

“Sorry,” I said above the music, “I don’t know where that came from.”

“It’s all good,” he assured me.

“I just — I don’t want you to be uncomfortable."

Bucky shook his head, a smile on his lips. “There are far more uncomfortable things than kissing you, trust me.”

I smiled. We stayed for one more dance, copying the people around us, chest to chest. It was late by the time we walked out of the club, the sky a deep, dark black. He radiated heat in the cool night air, so unlike the wintry menace he’d been on the bridge. I actually enjoyed being around him, I thought, with his quiet watchfulness and strange intelligence. 

Sirens blared in the distance, another person’s heartbreak. But not ours, not tonight: We’d had enough tragedy between the two of us. I suppose Bucky would never remember me. Or the fucked-up, blood-soaked ballerina I used to be. He might even have forgotten his best friend, his colorful star-spangled Captain. And if all that was gone, so be it. I had learned one thing from my nightmare of a life: Memories could always be made new. 

“Want to go in there?” he asked, tilted his head towards a tiny bar across the street. Cigarette butts littered the sidewalk, worn green awnings drooped over smudged windows. Yellow light radiated from inside, and a tired bartender dried glasses behind a long counter. It was old-timey and nostalgic, with a taxidermy salmon hung over the jukebox. It was the kind of place old men hung out. Bucky Barnes would fit right in, I thought distantly.

Memories would be made new.

“Sure,” I replied. I hadn’t been to a bar in ages; there had been no one to go with. Steve couldn’t get drunk, and Jessica Drew is a lightweight who giggles when she got wasted. Carol Danvers never had time (saving the galaxy or whatever), and Sam Wilson ran a damn AA support group. I refused to be the sad, lonely woman drinking vodka at an empty bar. 

Now I wasn’t alone. 

Two super assassins walk into a bar. Sounds like the start to a bad joke. I followed him across the street, craning my neck to watch a helicopter go over, with it’s telltale drone and blinking lights. The only shooting star we’d see, here in Brooklyn. If I was a different person, I might whisper a wish, a whisper into the void. 

He held the door for me, not caring that his metal wrist showed. Somewhere, a little bell tinkled, and the bartender looked up at us with a tired smile. It was warm inside, and painted a dark green reminiscent of seawater. It would have been quite nice, back in the 70’s. A couple of guys with mustaches played an intense game of pool in the back. 

We sat down at the polished bar, on stools upholstered in cracked teal pleather. The bartender was in her late forties, and had a sad shade of plum painted onto her thin lips. “What can I get you two tonight?” The bar-tender asked with a weary smile. 

“I’ll have a hard cider,” I said, the first thing that came to mind.

“I’ll have the same,” Bucky told the woman. Rock music spilled out of the jukebox, old and raggedy at the edges. 

“Can I see your ID’s?” She asked sweetly. I choked down a giggle, handing her the little card. Bucky smirked as he handed her some form of identification, likely fabricated. Very convincing, though, because she just nodded and handed it back. He was old enough to be this lady’s father. He’d lived through a World War and Soviet Russia. He got carded.

There was a TV mounted on the wall at the far end of the room. It was a little grainy, far from new. The nightly news had come on, and an earnest blonde woman stared intensely at the camera. I felt the smile melt off my face when I saw the screen. Because my face was emblazoned across half of it. 

“This just in. Highly dangerous ex-assassin Black Widow has cut all ties with S.H.I.E.L.D, and has quit the Avengers.” Bucky stilled, listening carefully. The reporter went on, arching one thin eyebrow as she did. "A spokesman for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division says that former agent Natasha Romanoff has resigned due to personal reasons and will be reached out to in case of an emergency situation. Many are glad to see Agent Romanoff off of the team, stating that she was untrustworthy given her history of undercover work and espionage. We can only hope that the former Widow, known to be volatile and morally lacking, will not be a threat to civilians. Back to you, Paul.”

“Motherfuckers,” I cursed under my breath. Bucky passed me his hoodie wordlessly, and I adjusted it to cover my hair, to lose myself in the gray fabric. He knew the drill: stay hidden at all costs. How did Maria let that information leak? Volatile, my ass. And I think my morals were on the upside. I helped win the battle of New York, didn't I? Many times, I'd helped protect the world from the products of Tony Stark’s overheated mind. Not to mention I’d taken in a World War II veteran and a stray cat. 

“Never trusted her anyway,” one of the men at the pool table sighed. His friend nodded in agreement. The bartender didn’t seem to hear, luckily. She slid two tall glasses towards us, full to the brim. Across the room, the voices on the news grated at my ears. Bucky was studiously ignoring it, taking measured sips of his drink. I pulled his big sweatshirt tighter around me, like maybe I could disappear into it. 

I took a long gulp of the cider before me, and it coated my tongue with syrupy sweet.

"Vkus kak yablochnogo soka,” Bucky muttered, his Russian rough at the edges, unused. “Tastes like apple juice."

I snorted; he was right. Not enough bite, I thought to myself. Seventeen-year-old, vodka-slurping me would have been ashamed. In Russia we didn’t drink apple juice, alcohol was made from potatoes and grit and pond water. Disgusting stuff, really, but back then I didn’t drink for the taste. The bartender floated away, out of earshot. I released a breath.

“Did you really leave the Avengers?” he asked in smooth, quiet English, leaning in towards me.

“I left S.H.I.E.L.D,” I corrected, taking another slug of my drink. “I told Director Hill that I’m done doing her dirty work. I turned in my belt. And that was that.” 

Bucky made a low whistling noise. “You got guts, doll,” he remarked, voice echoing of old Brooklyn, like caramel and cobblestone streets.

“Yeah, well,” I ran my fingertips over names carved into the wooden surface of the bar. Hearts and plus signs connected names, initials, short-lived professions of love. “I’ll start over. I just needed some time to breathe, is all."

“Must be hard.” Bucky watched me with his deep, dark thoughtful eyes. If I was any kind of artist, I’d paint his eyes in shades of frothy gray, deep charcoal, deepest black, the color of midnight in winter. "You’ve been the Black Widow since the beginning of time, seems like.” 

“Times change.” I looked down at his hand, curled around his glass. “I think I’ll always be the Black Widow. I won’t be able to pull myself out of it."

"Ty vsegda cpechatlyayut menya,” Bucky told me. He glanced over at me, his gaze dropping to my lips, away again. I smiled, because I’d heard the words before, once upon a time. They brought to mind flushed cheeks and exhaling clouds of air into the cold, slow-dancing in a dingy little apartment with nowhere else to go. 

You always did impress me, he’d said.

____________


	5. i'm sorry that I fell in love tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (listen to Is There Somewhere by Halsey for optimal reading experience)

“ _Kuda?_ ” I asked him in Russian as we stepped out of the bar. “Where to?” 

“ _Lyubom meste_ ,” Bucky replied, “Anywhere.”

His hands were at his sides, palms up like he could hold the whole world in his arms. With those muscles and that heart, he could do anything he put his mind to, and I was sure of it.

The streetlamps were unusually bright, golden orange, illuminating car widows and faded graffiti. I felt warm, from my toes in their boots all the way up to my hands, fingernails painted a chipped red. Everything was just a little out of focus. Bucky had rolled his sleeves up fearlessly, the reticulated metal glinting in the light. No one was around to see; we were a pair of spectres, _prizraki_ , wandering the city streets. I could see my reflection in the steel, my silhouette painted gold by the streetlights, a softer version of myself. I looked like a Renaissance painting splashed with blood.

“Let’s go down to the river,” he suggested softly as we approached the motorcycle. The buildings around us were tall and dark, a canyon of concrete and dust. His eyes were pools of gray, rainwater or storm clouds. “It’s not far. Maybe seven, eight minutes on the Harley."

Oh. Where the lights glittered and the river sloshed up onto the seawalls. Where Brooklyn surrounded you like a warm embrace, dark and heavy, smelling of seawater. I could imagine him, young boy with a smile on his face, unadulterated hope surging through his veins. Who knows, maybe it could be cathartic, going back there.

Maybe he’ll remember, a voice inside my head whispered, soft and urgent. Maybe he’ll remember everything. I pushed the thought away, before it infected me, before I started believing too much. I wiped the hole in my heart with lemon-scented cleaner.

“Okay, sure,” I said evenly, “wanna drive?”

He nodded, and we climbed on. As we pulled away from the parking lot, I wrapped my arms around his midsection. Under the dress shirt, he was all lean muscle, the kind that didn’t make a big deal of itself. I tucked my chin into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, catching the ghost of a smile on his lips as I did. 

As strange as it would sound, Bucky was a good driver. Better than me, probably, though I’d loathe to admit it. He braked smoothly, shifted lanes carefully, and never broke the speed limit. Most likely, it was for my sake. Ever the gentleman.

We pulled into an empty lot, paved black, scrappy dandelions pushing through the cracks. Empty shipping containers sat unused. Rusting. They waited to be defaced into something more beautiful. And there was a lonely pier, stretching out over the water. It was uneven, bobbing with the current.

Bucky looked around at the decrepit buildings, full lips open just a little. Longing in his eyes, heavy, dusty nostalgia weighing on him.

“Remind you of something?” I asked quietly, though I already knew the answer.

And he wasn’t looking at me, not quite, but at the buildings around us, faded from the sun. 

“There . . . There used to be an ice cream parlor here. Twenty cents for a scoop, and the girl behind the counter was a knockout. Me and Steve . . .” he paused, pained. “We used to come here and skip stones across the water. He was terrible at it."

His hands were limp at his sides, defeated. He felt distraught, I could tell by the way his mouth hung down, how his eyebrows canted together. Bucky felt alone, out of time, a clock with broken gears. But he wasn’t, he wasn’t because I was here and I cared. Against all my better judgement, I took his cool, long-fingered hand in mine. 

_Goddamn, I thought._ I _care_ about James Buchanan Barnes. 

Everything I touched withered and fell away. I’m the Black Widow, after all. That’s just how the story goes.

That boy would be better off without me.

“Let’s go down to the dock,” Bucky said, voice light. So we did, hand in hand, step by step. Down to the rickety pier bobbing under our feet. It was made of wood, weather-worn and splattered with seagull droppings. It creaked, protesting. I paid it no mind. 

The river was beautiful at night, the oily water glistening blue, silver, black. Skyscrapers reflected in it, tall and impenetrable, modern day castles with their own queens and kings. A night like this, sky huge and glowing with light pollution, it was easy to remember how small you were. 

I pretended not to notice that Bucky kept stealing glances at me.

A plastic bottle floated past. We were spoiling the only world we’d been given, with plastic and with words and with bullets. “What are you thinking about?” Bucky asked me. He never let go of my hand.

“You,” I said bluntly.

“Why?”

“Because you’re endlessly fascinating and frustratingly complex, James Buchanan Barnes.” And it was true. If he was a piece of poetry, I’d scrawl it on my wrists and whisper it into the pillow, line by line. If he was a piece of art, I’d print it out and tape it to my mirror. I’d look at him every day as I brushed my teeth, I’d feel that poem, that painting in the pit of my stomach. And I would never, ever understand it. 

“You know, Natalia,” he breathed by name like a cloud of smoke, "you’re more than I ever hoped for.”

The wind blew, and his long scraggly hair did too. I felt something inside me collapse, like a dam made up of sandbags. There was a man next to me, kind and gentle and monstrous all at once. And I knew that people like us weren’t meant to love. I was a matchstick girl, and he was a flood of gasoline.

“I know,” I replied, and my voice didn’t break. 

James Barnes wrapped his arms around me, the metal cold and the flesh warm. He hugged me tight, steadfast, and I stood on my tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck.

And I swear, I smelled ice cream in the air. 

 

______


	6. crawl home to her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Natalia's story comes to a close, for now.
> 
>  
> 
> (for best reading experience, listen to "work song" by hozier

   ______ 

 

  When we got home, my stomach growled terribly. 

 

  “Hungry?” I asked Bucky, kicking off my shoes.

 

  “A little."

 

  I opened the fridge to find a grim display. An expired bottle of mustard. Shriveled clementines covered in blue netting. A tall bottle of brown liquid that might have been fish sauce. A half-finished energy drink leftover from a failed mission. Depressing. 

 

  Bucky looked very ordinary standing in my kitchen, smudgy black shirt and dusty boots. I was tired and dragging, ready to slump into deep sleep at any moment. 

 

  And my fridge was failing to produce. 

 

  Firecrackers resounded in the distance, and both of us prickled at the sound. Explosions, crackly and hollow. Some wounds never healed.

 

  “I know a 24 hour noodle place,” I offered, picking up my phone. The restaurant’s menu, limp and folded three times over, was tacked onto my refrigerator. Too many nights I’d forgotten to go grocery shopping. Takeout it was. “Ever had Vietnamese?"

 

  "Never had the chance,” Bucky said, hands shoved in pockets. I suppose HYDRA didn’t have “cultural experiences” at the top of their priority list. He’d have spent 70 years on tasteless meat and nutrition packs. Just enough to keep building muscle, to stay healthy. I knew the drill.

 

  “You’ll like it, trust me,” I said, and picked up the phone, typing in the number quickly. I over-ordered, figuring that a pair of super assassins could tuck away a fair amount. And besides, protein and spicy noodles were always appreciated. 

 

  When I hung up, Bucky was looking out the window absently, melancholic, a Coppola film come to life. The outside light painted him shades of blue, of gold. In my mind, I scribbled his portrait, outlined his strong profile in ink pen. I tucked away the image for a later time.

 

  I flopped on the couch, a soft gray thing bought for ten bucks from the girl upstairs. It was saggy and stained with cheap wine. A pillow at the end had a neat dent in it. I opened up my laptop.

 

  Trusty old laptop. Used for espionage, remote monitoring, and movies. Unfortunately, there was Dorito dust in the keyboard. I ignored it.

 

  Bucky sat down next to me, gingerly seating himself a foot away. 

 

  I turned to him. “Wanna see what’s on Netflix?” 

 

  “Sure, yeah.” He said, his head lolling against the back of the couch. We were drained, exhausted. And yet too high off of night air and cortisol to feel tired. Liho leaped onto his lap, rolling around like a pill bug until he petted her glossy fur.

 

  “What do you want to watch?” I asked grimly, scrolling through the Netflix page. Bad eighties movies, several predictable crime shows, and a  Netflix Original about my noted ex-boyfriend running around in red pajamas. Nothing I’d want to watch with him.

 

  “Uh . . .” He scratched his head. "Is Game of Thrones on there?”

 

  “No, but I can download it off the —“ I stopped, looking over at him. "Where’d you hear about Game of Thrones, Bucky?"

 

   “A woman was watching it on the train, once.” He looked at the screen, glowing eerily blue in the dark. “It seems so normal.”

 

   Normal. What a strange and flighty thing.

 

   And that’s how I spent the whole night curled on the couch next to Bucky Barnes, watching people get stabbed and maimed and pushed out of towers. We ate our noodles and sniffled from my over-application of sriracha sauce. 

 

  Liho purred, content. 

 

  Our hands sat, not quite touching, unflinching and still. 

 

  And I couldn’t stop looking at him.

 

____

 

 

  I woke up to the clatter of dishes in the sink, and dusty light filtering in through the blinds. Beautiful and lazy. God, it was eleven already.

 

  Last night I’d managed to trudge into my bed before falling into a foggy, dream-heavy sleep. Dragons and clouds swirled in my head, fanciful and fiery and fading rapidly. We stayed up way too late.

 

  I peeled off the sweaty tights from last night, unzipped the sheath dress. I let them puddle on the floor. I changed into a baggy pair of cargo pants and a soft black t-shirt. I needed to do laundry. And a great deal of other things.

 

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I told Bucky, who was recently showered and elbow-deep in suds.

  “I know,” he said, shooting me a smile. He placed a bowl in the drying rack, already full of mismatched plates and silverware. He’d done the lot. Swept the kitchen, too, and folded his blankets on the couch. 

 

  “Thanks, Bucky.” I said, meaning it. I heated up two bowls of leftover noodle soup.

 

  He sat down across from me, smelling of lemon dish soap and woodsmoke. Delicious.

 

  We slurped pho as gracefully as possible, abandoning chopsticks in favor of forks and spoons. I sat watching the rice noodles and basil float around. Chili oil rose to the top, slicking the surface of the broth. It was better the second time around. We ate in silence, minutes ticking by slowly on the stove clock. Tiny pairs of feet pounded upstairs, a family of five on their way to soccer practice or whatever it was people did in the summertime.

 

  The spiderweb still hung in my window, iridescent and shining. He’d left it alone. It truly was beautiful, more intricate and pristine than anything humans had ever created. 

 

  “Natalia?” He said, clearing our bowls, rinsing them.

 

  “Bucky?” I said, leaning on the counter.

 

  He turned off the sink and turned to face me. “How long do you want me to stay? I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

 

  I looked up at him, searching, thinking about the cafe and the motorcycle and the end of the dock. How much dimmer they’d be without him. And I could get by on my own, that wasn’t the question. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to heal.

 

  Life wasn’t just about surviving, anymore.

 

  I looked into his eyes, every shade of gray, and I said, “stay however long you want.”

 

  The words took a moment to sink in. I was offering it again. The tarnished promise of forever. 

 

  “Well, then, doll.” Bucky reached a hand up to ruffle his hair, his t-shirt hitching up as he did. He looked around the apartment. “I hope you don’t have a fella.”

 

   “Oh, I do have one, milii moi,” I whispered, and his hand was curling around the back of my neck. My lips parted as they met his, soft and slow and savoring. Colors popped behind my eyelids as I closed them, breathing in the sweet smell of his skin. He was sunsets and firecrackers and apple cider and a lilting Brooklyn accent that would never go away. He was streetlights and dragons and my lipstick smudged on his lower lip. 

 

  His hand on my back.

 

  Flashing lights. 

 

  A warm, easy morning melting into evening. Two hopeless idiots making out in a kitchen.

 

 

  ____

 

 

  You see, I don’t believe in fate or soulmates or any of that bullshit.

 

  But I do think that sometimes, maybe, the universe fights for two souls to be together. No matter how much pain the cause each other, they just keep coming back, craving each other. It may be bloody. It may be cruel and chrome.  But in the end, they fall in love anyway. In the end, the universe wins.

 

  Or maybe Bucky and I are just really, really fucking stubborn.

 

 

____

 

 

THE END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for reading, thank you for the kudos and wonderful comments and all the support you've given me. I hope you enjoyed reading "Winter Is Over." This was so fun to write.


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